


transformation

by fe3hlix



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Dehumanization, M/M, POV Second Person, Retrospective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:35:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29172735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fe3hlix/pseuds/fe3hlix
Summary: There is something less than human inside of you, you think. A haunting inside that only he can see.And then he dies.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	transformation

There is a moment you really see him for the first time. His lance rips through an armored ribcage like boars tusks into the weak flesh of prey. It makes a deep, nauseating slick sound as he pulls it out and then uses it to strike down another rebel. Another, another, another, until his hands and face and hair are so red with blood that it feels like he was never once golden. His eyes, still so bright blue, blaze like hearth flame, glowing through the sea of red, overcome with something so animal you can no longer see yourself in them. He is no longer a man.

Two years later he looks at you with eyes so blue and human you feel sick with it. There is a monster underneath, a _beast_ , and you have seen it, and still when he is in danger you are by his side. Still, you take the arrow meant for him. Still, in a moment of weakness, when his hands find your face, you lean in. There is something less than human inside of you, you think. A haunting inside that only he can see. 

And then he dies.

You spend five years hovering like a ghost. You told yourself you would never become one of his, but every bite and drink feels tasteless. Are you turning into him? You see him in your dreams, forget the smell of his hair, tear your sword through an enemy and remember that sick sucking sound. The world turns to fire and in the middle of a battlefield you feel more like a fallen soldier than the corpses lying in blood. 

And then he comes back from the dead.

It is more than before. He rips men in two with his bare hands. There is nearly nothing left, only flickers of a person between a monster that talks to ghosts. You watch him. You touch him. Berate yourself for hoping that there is ever a chance he will see you and turn human again, but still you try. You feel the raised flesh of scars you will never know about. You want him back. 

Instead, the professor comes back. A friend, someone kinder to him than you ever were. Instead, your father dies. Another Fraldarius sent home in a box in the name of duty. 

Instead of you bringing the monster back from the brink, it is the two of them. There is a semblance of normalcy. He talks to his ghosts, but less so. He speaks like he used to. He smiles, laughs, washes his own hair. He skirts around you and pauses and flushes and there is so much guilt and pain in his eyes it sickens you. 

You had wanted it more than anyone. Wanted _him_ more than anyone. But still you are sharp toothed and silver tongued. You get angry too quickly. You don’t listen. You don’t see. You don’t _understand_. 

_Why were you not enough?_

You stand behind the ghosts of your brother and father. You were never the first choice. You fought him and fed him and screamed sense at him when nobody else would, when he was so out of his mind with bloodlust nobody dared draw near. They all said you were wrong, but when his truth laid before them they would not meet your eyes. You spent nights in the rubble watching him, forcing your trembling hands to still.

And it was not you.  
  
 _Will it ever be?_ You think of running away for only one moment until you see the way his hair catches the orange glow of sunset. See his hands grip the banister of a balcony as he looks out over a kingdom that he’s fought so hard to save. See how when he meets your eye, he smiles in a way he doesn’t with anyone else. 

_I can’t be Glenn,_ you say. _I won’t be._  
  
He looks at you in a way you don’t understand. _I have never wanted you to be anything but yourself, Felix._

The war ends. The Savior King rules over, and restores the land anew. He is kind, and patient, and takes every concern seriously, but he is too soft where he once was impenetrable. Once impossible to move, now so easy to crumble. You stay at his right side, his seeing side, and carve away with a knifed tongue the petty problems a king should not have to handle.  
  
You make sure he eats. You make sure he sleeps. Every day is a reminder that you cannot go back to how things were. He is still so fragile in a way that doesn’t entirely make sense to you, but you’re trying to understand now. 

In the castle’s garden, a flower struggles to survive under the first winds of winter. You wonder, as you stare at his back, the pale of his hair highlighted in blending pinks and purples from the slow rising sun, if you can have this. You sit beside him—his right side, always—and he takes your hand in his own, brings it to his lips, and reopens an old wound you’ve tried so many times to close. You watch the sunrise together and speak of old scars. He talks of mending, and takes your hair from its tie, and as it falls around your shoulders like twilight you release a breath you’ve been holding for ten years. 

_It almost killed us_ , you think, in the dawn when you kiss him for the first time. He trembles under your touch and you feel every stitch unravel, every vulnerability laid bare. The press of his mouth feels warm, and after everything, _despite_ everything, you want this. You don’t want to go back to how things were. 

The snow sparkles like diamonds under the white sun. At the end of the war, there is the birth of a new world. With him, you are just now beginning. He smiles at you, full of light, and you see each other for the first time.


End file.
